作者：David Edery

免费游戏（其主要收益来自游戏内部道具贩售）早在10多年前便诞生了。而现在免费游戏早已遍布各地。我在写这篇文章时免费游戏更是占据了iOS热门游戏榜单前10名中的8个名额。甚至有传言说下一代所有的主机都将支持免费游戏模式。而游戏产业中最突出也最受人尊敬的开发商（如PopCap，Valve等）也开始拥护这种模式。

但是仍有许多西方游戏开发者对此喜忧参半，他们担心免费模式是否会是一种“邪恶的”模式，并将破坏游戏玩法。但是事实上免费游戏只是一种工具，与其它强大的工具一样它们既有可能创造一些有趣的内容也有可能导致一些糟糕的结果。

对于我来说免费游戏就是：不需要依赖于任何广告收益或政府补助而带给无数人娱乐体验的机会。给予那些想玩我们的游戏但却无力支付的玩家体验游戏的机会，而不是迫使他们成为盗版用户。

采用免费模式的开发者不再只是创造一次性的娱乐体验，而是创造永久的游戏，并得到那些乐于为此花钱的忠实粉丝的支持。

这在大众媒体发展史上，我们首次能够摆脱通过广告而创收，同时又不会让用户成为盗版者的一个创举。如此为何会有人忽视了免费模式的魔力呢？

free to play(from blog.games.com)

再优秀的工具也会有负面作用

你可以创造类似于老虎机的免费游戏，并以此吸引那些具有成瘾性的玩家。纸牌游戏（如二十一点）也是基于这种原理，但是我们却未曾听过有人反对所有纸牌游戏（如多米诺或单人纸牌）。所以请不要再将免费模式可能带来的负面效果等同于它的全部作用！

那些讨厌免费游戏的群体为何不将其视为一种累进税（游戏邦注：税率随课税对象数额的增加而提高的税，即按照课税对象数额的大小，规定不同等级的税率）呢？没错，这一系统能够让相对富有的玩家自愿支出的费用补贴“穷人”玩游戏。

这不可行吗？让我们以《Triple Town》和《狂神国度》为例。比起“购买”优势，这两款游戏都更加支持技能型的玩家，也就是缺少技能但却富裕的玩家不可能因为花钱而超越技能高超的玩家。两款游戏也并未包含鼓励玩家消费的系统——尽管玩家每个月仍会投入较大的开支。但是玩家在游戏中的开销永远不会超过他们在现实生活中投入于赛车，高尔夫球，园艺等爱好中的钱。

《狂神国度》是一种累进税系统

character slot(from thechromesource.com)

《狂神国度》主要是通过出售“角色插槽”（游戏邦注：即让玩家能够同时操纵多个角色）以及“保管库”（即让玩家的角色能够储存更多战利品）而获得收益。但是这些都不是玩家玩游戏的必需品，并且他们也可以通过创造一个额外的免费帐号（虽然这么做并不方便）而免费获得这些道具。除此之外游戏的一大收入来源还包括（通向地下城的）“钥匙”销售，否则玩家就必须努力在游戏中找到这些钥匙。同样地，购买钥匙也非玩家玩游戏或进入地下城的先决条件；花钱购买只是一种便捷方法而已。

《狂神国度》中地下城钥匙的设置最有趣之处便在于它是累进税或社会福利般的免费模式的最佳表现。玩家总是希望能够进入地下城，因为里面有许多非常棒的战利品。但是购买钥匙只是帮你争取到获得战利品的机会，你还需要一定的技能才能获得战利品。而因为战利品最丰富的地下城往往也是最危险之处，所以那些购买了钥匙的富裕玩家便会希望邀请其他玩家与之同行，唯恐自己独自死在地下城中。

不要抱有成见

我总是认为人们怀念过去的游戏开发方式，以及设计师不考虑经济收益的行径非常可笑。我们在小时候所玩的街机游戏中可能每隔几分钟便会死去。但是尽管如此我们仍然非常喜欢《吃豆人》，《大金刚》以及《街头霸王》等游戏，并且也是受到这些游戏的启发才努力成为一名游戏开发者。

甚至一些现代游戏也深受其商业模式的影响。不论是PC游戏中的数字版权管理（DRM）或者主机游戏中不必要的“仅支持在线”功能都是为了防范游戏倒卖的行为，开发者也一直面临用户希望获得便宜（或免费）产品的商业模式挑战。同时也有一些玩家希望在线游戏能够更为长久——尽管有时候这些游戏需要服务器以及其他昂贵的基础设施支持。所以为何不满足他们的愿望呢？

总结

我并不是在向所有人推销免费游戏。也有许多游戏并不适合免费模式。所以如果你真心喜欢这种游戏，那就坚持继续做下去，只需要理解我们这些选择其他模式的开发者的做法就行了。多年来我们一直坚持提供免费游戏去娱乐上百万玩家（而非使用任何强制性广告或政府扶持资金），你仔细思考一番就会发现免费模式的奇妙之处。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Opinion: The magic of free-to-play

by David Edery

The first successful free to play games — aka “games whose primary revenue source were in-game purchases” — hit the market over a decade ago. Now they’re everywhere. They account for eight of the top 10 grossing games on iOS as I write this. Rumor has it that all the major consoles will support free to play games in the next generation. Even our industry’s most prominent, respected developers (i.e. PopCap, Valve, etc) have begun to embrace the model.

And yet there are still many game developers in the West who have mixed feelings about free to play, worrying that it is “evil” or that it perverts gameplay. But free to play is just a tool, and like any other powerful tool it can be used to create beautiful things or it can be used to create ugly things.

Let me tell you what free to play represents to me: an opportunity to bring entertainment to billions of people without relying on advertising revenue or government subsidies. An opportunity to embrace players who want to play our games but can’t (or won’t) pay, instead of forcing them to become pirates.

An opportunity to stop making disposable entertainment experiences and instead create games that live forever, supported by devoted fans who happily spend money to keep their favorite hobby alive.

For the first time in the history of mass media, we can entertain huge audiences without first bombarding them with advertisements for sugar water and corn flakes and without making them pirates. How is it that some people don’t see the beauty of this?

(Note: I’m not personally opposed to advertising in games. But I find it puzzling that so many developers accept advertising — aka psychological manipulation of consumers – as a given while decrying in-app payments.)

Any good tool can be used for evil

Yes, you can build free to play games that resemble slot machines and are designed to prey on people with addictive personalities. This is also true of card games (i.e. Blackjack), but you don’t hear people protesting against all card games (i.e. Dominion or Solitaire) as a result. So please, stop confusing the bad things you could do via free to play with everything that can be done via free to play!

Here’s a challenge for every curmudgeon out there who hates free to play games: start thinking about them as a form of progressive taxation, and allow your mind to expand from there. That’s right: a system that subsidizes the poor via the willing and gratefully-made payments of the relatively wealthy.

Think it can’t be done? Check out Triple Town and Realm of the Mad God. Both heavily favor skilled play over “purchased” advantages; unskilled, wealthy players absolutely cannot purchase their way above skilled players on the leaderboard. Neither contain systems that encourage insane levels of spending, though large monthly expenditures are possible. Nothing beyond the level of what an enthusiast might spend on a favorite real-world hobby like RC cars, golf, gardening, etc.

RotMG as progressive taxation

Realm of the Mad God generates revenue primarily via the sale of “character slots,” which allow you to play more than one character at a time, and “vaults,” which allow your characters to squirrel away more loot. Neither of these things are required to play the game and both can essentially be acquired for free by creating additional free accounts, though that’s obviously not as convenient. A large additional source of revenue comes from the sale of “keys,” which are instant portals to dungeons that must otherwise be sought out in the game. Again, buying keys isn’t a precondition to playing the game or even gaining access to dungeons; they are simply a convenience.

What’s particularly interesting about the dungeon keys in Realm of the Mad God is that they are, in many ways, the purest incarnation of the idea of free to play as a progressive tax or social good. Players want to plunder dungeons because they contain good loot. But buying a key just gets you a chance to earn that loot; you still need skill to actually earn it. And because the most lucrative dungeons are also the most deadly, wealthy players who buy keys have an explicit incentive to invite along other players, lest they die alone and lootless in their own private dungeon.

Rose-tinted glasses

It always amuses me when people pine for the “good old days” of game development, when designers weren’t concerned with base financial considerations. The arcade games that many of us grew up playing were explicitly and pain-stakingly designed to munch quarters every few minutes! But many of us still fell in love with Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Street Fighter, and were inspired by those games to become the developers we are today.

Even modern games have been impacted by their business model. Whether it’s DRM in PC games or unnecessary “online-only” features in console games intended to deter their resale, developers are constantly struggling with business challenges imposed by consumer desire for a cheaper (or free) product. There’s also the common player desire for online games to live forever, even when those games require servers and other expensive infrastructure. So why not embrace those desires?

Signing off

I’m not suggesting that free to play is for everyone. There are many amazing games that would be difficult and perhaps impossible to make as free to play games. So yes, if you love those games, keep making them. Just understand why the rest of us have chosen a different path. We’ve chosen the opportunity to entertain millions of people, for free, often without any forced advertising or government support, for years and years to come. It’s an amazing thing when you stop to really think about it. (source:GAMASUTRA)